Recent App Reviews

Princess Fury is a blast, but I thought there was a bit more strategy to controlling the different squads. Mostly you run around slashing the crap out of enemies, and collecting new weapons and troops to advance through the different levels. You can control your avatar--the Princess her bad self--and can muster or disperse her minions during combat. The game has a good mix of challenges, and the bosses get progressively harder (I had trouble getting past the first ogre).

I’ve always been more of a top down or isometric view racing fan than a first / third person view one, so Cubed Rally Racer should be right up my alley. The truth is that in some ways it is. On the other hand, I find it quite frustrating. The problem is, even when I get completely frustrated I find myself having to play just one more time. Oh the irony of it all. It’s a good thing this game requires two hands, or I’m not sure I’d have any hair left after a few sessions.

Asciigraphy lets you take a picture, sort of. When you start it up and go to take a picture the image you see in your iPhone is a myriad of Asci text that forms your image. Right now all you can do is take a picture using the effect. Later versions promise to be able to import photos you've already got. The first (and so far only) picture I've had a chance to take is one of my computer's desktop. Unfortunately, it's difficult to even make out what it shows. The text is too clear. Hopefully, when I get outside to take some pictures it will look better. Can't complain since it's for free. Try it. Here's my desktop...sort of.

In a recent column I wrote about the Slacker streaming music service that lets you create "stations" that stream only your favorite type of music. And I highlighted a new feature of their Slacker Radio app for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad: the ability to cache songs for offline listening. But the caching feature requires a Slacker Radio Plus account. I have good news: I'm giving away five 1-year and five 3-month subscriptions to Slacker Radio Plus.

Long before the likes of 28 Days Later and Zombieland, zombies were actually creepy. Why? Because they were slow and lumbering, and yet they still managed to overwhelm their victims time after time. People didn’t go to the zombies – the zombies went to the people. And there was always a sense of fear and dread wondering what forgotten crevice the undead would pop out of in the small area that the protagonists had managed to get themselves trapped in. Welcome to Undead: In The Last Refuge, a game that remembers what the good old days were like. Throw on your headphones, turn off the lights, and try and tell me you don’t get just a bit of the heebie-jeebies as you’re wandering about the house trying to figure out where the next batch of zombies are coming from.

A friend has created a useful app if you're serious about photography. iWatermark ($2.99) puts a digital signature on your photos. This can be useful not only for protecting your intellectual property, but also for promoting your brand by having your logo in all your images.

I'll be getting round to posting up a full review later on Princess Fury, but it looks cool already, and wanted to get the word out that it can be grabbed in the App store. I love any game involving battle strategy (see my recent review of the most excellent Land Air Sea Warfare). So go check out Princess Fury at the links above...and stay tuned for my review.

The game is not hugely challenging, but it is free, and a kinda fun time-killer for when you are standing in line at the store or something (or at the dealer waiting for your financing to get approved). New music tracks are featured in this version, and you can't beat the price...Read on for full press release, links, etc...

Confession time – I’m not sure I ever actually read the description of Bloomies before I agreed to review it. The screen shots looked cool and a friend said that he and his wife were into it, so that was good enough for me. Then I loaded it up and was like “hey, this is another garden game”. As a result, it took me a few tries before I really was willing to give the game a chance. Turns out that was just sadly wasted game time on my part. While this isn’t the kind of game you’ll play for hours at a time, it’s definitely the kind of game you could play for weeks on end. It doesn’t seem right that a game about growing flowers could be so intriguing, but then that’s part of what makes gaming so great.

I figured I would post a variety of updates of what I have been doing with my tech lately. These are in no particular order.

Documents to go was updated two days ago with support for the iPad. This app is now a universal binary so it can be used on the iPad, Touch, and iPhone. I am looking forward to using it more on the Pad as I think I will get more use of it there than I have had on the Touch.